Electrical motors of electricity-fuel hybrid driven vehicles or fully electrically driven vehicles are powered supplied by batteries through cables, with high currents and/or voltages. For security reasons, it is required that little or no electrical current flows in the power contacts during connecting or disconnecting these cables or in other word during the unplugging of the connectors of the power circuit comprising these cables.
Upon unmating of a connector from a corresponding counter connector in the case of electrical power lines with high current and/or voltages undesired and potentially dangerous electrical arching can occur when the electrical contact terminals arranged in the connector housings are disconnected from each other. Therefore, in cases with high current and/or voltage it is usually necessary to switch-off the power supply before for example an electrical power connector is unmated. This procedure is error-prone since an operator trying to unmate a power connector from for example its corresponding socket may not know the correct procedure or ignored it to save time and effort. Further, in case of emergency it is often not possible or there is not enough time to follow the correct unmating procedure and to actuate for example a switch before unmating a connector system. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a connector system which can be used for high power applications and which can be safely unmated without any actuating of additional emergency switches and which can safely be unmated by untrained personal, as for example emergency services, without the necessity to study operating instructions. In other words, it would be desirable to have such a connector system with the desired safety function which is designed such that an operator trying to unmate the connector will inevitably and naturally perform the necessary manual operations such that a potential dangerous arching can be avoided.
Such a connector system is in particular desirable for applications with electricity-fuel hybrid driven vehicles or fully electrically driven vehicles, since the electrical power used in such vehicles is considerably higher than the currents and/or voltages usually used in ordinary fuel driven passenger vehicles. If such a hybrid vehicle is for example involved in an accident or has to undergo an ordinary vehicle service it is for safety reasons required that the electrical power circuit of the car is safely deactivated. Although a switch for such a purpose might be adequate for service situations in a garage, it is not as suitable for emergency situations, since for example a switch might be damaged in a car accident or it might be blocked and cannot be actuated. Further, it should be noted that for the high currents and/or voltages occurring in such hybrid vehicle applications such a switch necessarily has to have a substantial size and thus requires a large space in for example an engine compartment.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a connector system or assembly which offers an integrated safety function in particular in view of the mating and unmating processes in case of electrical power lines and which avoids the disadvantages of the prior art. It is a further object of the invention to offer a connector system and a method for unmating of such connectors which allows a safe, yet simple unmating process which is preferably self explanatory for the operator and which does e.g. not require any instructions or training. It is a further object of the invention to achieve all the above with a connector system, which is particularly cost efficient and fail proof. Still further, it is an object of the invention to provide a connector system and a method which improves the safety situation of passenger vehicles with high current electrical power systems, as they are typically found in hybrid or electrical vehicles.
These and other objects, which will become apparent on reading the following description, are solved by the connector systems and methods according to the independent claims.